Majoritarian Agenda Control

• In Event: Lawmaking Today

Abstract

We address a question central to the literature on legislative organization: why do centrist legislators delegate gatekeeping and other agenda setting powers that prevent them from achieving the legislative outcomes they would seem to prefer? We develop a formal model in which a legislator must gain the support of two pivotal voters, e.g., in a primary and general election, in order to remain in office. The legislator can be motivated by electoral goals, by policy goals, or by a mix of the two, and has the ability to reduce the visibility of issues to voters by keeping them off of the legislative agenda. We find that when confronting a policy proposal that divides the voters, it is an equilibrium for the legislator to gatekeep even when doing so frustrates short-term policy aims. Our model offer a new rationale for why centrists in Congress support agenda-limiting institutions, such as majority party gatekeeping and the Senate filibuster.

Authors

• Robert Van Houweling

• David Robert Foster, Florida State University